My Brain's Nauseous

I reached a new point of exhaustion today. It’s called the “barf phase.” I was so weary and drained that I actually felt like throwing up.

I participated in so many meetings today, that after 12 hours, my head was full. My head regularly feels full, whereas if I turn my head too far sideways, my brain matter will leak out my ear. Today, my head was so full that I literally didn’t know what to do with myself. You know how you feel when you eat way too much cookie dough or fudge and you just want to die? That’s how I felt on a mental level. I had eaten way too much intellectual dough and wanted to die. Well, not DIE (that’s a bit dramatic), but I definitely felt like I over-indulged in brain fodder today. In fact, to counteract the effects of the brain binge, I almost feel like blowing an entire day by playing Dr. Mario on Wii with The Edge.

Anyway, today was Mission Integration and Ethics. As I stated before, the spiritual nature of today’s meeting caught me off guard. The morning consisted of centering reflections and time to decompress. The afternoon, however, spiraled me UP a vortex of corporate management. It started with a discussion about healthcare reform and how Muppet Corporate was going to respond to the healthcare reform bill that will be released from the Senate next week. A few folks started talking about how we needed to respond RIGHT NOW and the easiest way was to create webpages both in the Intranet and the Internet. One of my former co-workers (a Sister), said “Dorrie knows website design!”

So I found myself on an instantaneous task force with two regional CEO’s and two long-term Sisters. I realized my advantage in being technologically-savvy; as we discussed, I pulled right-to-life websites down on my Blackberry for additional discussion. In the span of one hour, we charged the corporate marketing people with the direction. That’s all they wanted me for…to think it through, explore the options, and conceptualize a plan. Not to actually do the work. How refreshing--and another element to my executive training.

After that, I joined the Ethics committee meetings and ended up leading a portion of the disaster-preparedness discussion. There are a lot of ethical questions surrounding H1N1, especially if we run out of ventilators. How will we decide who gets them? Will there be an age cut-off? Co-morbidities? Yeah, the list goes on and on. After mentally and verbally sparring with a room full of doctors and Sisters, I was bushed. I guzzled a regular Coke in the hope I could capture some energy!

Because (drum roll, please), I had to teleconference back into St. Fozzie’s and pitch my strategic plan to the people in strategy and marketing. I explained my logic, my reasoning, and the structure to the plan. It was silent for a full 10 seconds before someone finally started picking at word semantics. I couldn’t believe it, how no one picked at the structure of the plan. That was what I was worried about! To me, words were just place-holders! I did decide to work with our corporate strategist on Monday before I present everything to Senior Leadership on Tuesday. There’s another way I can structure it…but I’m still presenting MY ideas first and the corporate strategist’s SECOND.

So after 12 or so hours of this, I had overdosed on intellectual fodder. I need some Pepto Bismol or Tums for the brain. Do they make such a thing? Is that where wine and chocolate* come in?

*Because of the terrible gloominess outside, I baked a tiny batch of chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t overdose on actual cookie dough, though.